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Hello, This is my first message on the forum, although I have been reading you for a few months.
I am a conservatory-trained guitarist with several decades of semi-professional experience. I have a good foundation of classical technique, harmony, chords, sight reading, composition, etc. But my weak point is improvisation, and I want to introduce some improvisation in the jazz and bossa nova repertoire that I play in my solo guitar gigs and when I play with a singer.
A couple of months ago I started to study jazz with the book "Jazz Theory Resources" by Bert Ligon, which I think is fantastic. I also bought "The Complete Jazz Guitar Method" by Jody Fisher, and I'm following it step by step, but there are things that don't fit me: weird chords and very difficult fingerings, which are presented in inversions, while there are other alternatives with the fundamental in the bass that do not appear. I'm also not playing the chords studies, I'm skipping them. The problem is memorizing so much material and not seeing the practical sense yet. I'm a bit lost with this method and would appreciate some advice from someone who has worked with it.
Thank you very much and greetings!
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10-31-2022 02:31 PM
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All improv is using the harmonic framework to sequence short and long motifs.
The basic material you have for this are:
scales
arps
intervals
licks
patterns
the melody
Books can be rough. With your background, you should be able to jump right into improv. Youtube is a better resource, just type in whatever topic you're working on. Also, you can't go wrong with a teacher. Studying with a good jazz musician is really invaluable.
This is a good example of the process how you can go from the raw material to something that's starting to sound musical:
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Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
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No prob!
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Learn songs.
Great American songbook, learn the melodies. Internalize them.
I'd say start with Misty. Darn That Dream, Blue Bossa. All great "top-shelf" melodies.
Once you know the melody you know the tune. Any re-harmonizations of later covers will be eazier to understand.
Find a version you like and work from that. (Making sure you understand the original melody)
Plus, if you have all that experience you probably have "too much" technique.
Time spent doing finger exercises (scales) iz time wasted not learning songs.
All the technique you need is in the song anyway.
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Originally Posted by Travelrock
Jazz Guitar Method
S
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Originally Posted by Travelrock
The other day I made a little chart that can help. It's very basic but it's really understandable.
I made a little thing about voicings
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To improvise, you need to be able to conceive of interesting melodic ideas and then immediately execute them. That means hearing something in your head and then being able to play it. I would get away from the written material and do a lot of listening. Copy some stuff you like, but just to get ideas and to see what others are doing. If you can't hear something and then play it fairly easily, then that is a skill you'll have to work on.
Or, you could just learn a bunch of licks and string them together.
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Please go see live music as soon as you can. The process can only be approximated in a most unwieldy and awkward manner in a written, and arguably an academic form. Go see a seasoned group of musicians, preferably in person, and open your ears. You will witness all the things you may read about, but you'll be hit in a real time way, where dynamics, decision making, lexicon and syntax are unfolding in front of you with the same air, time and possibilities shared between the performer and you.
I'm not saying this will give you the answers, but I am saying it will re-order the way you ask questions and put a shape to the multi dimensionality that real time composing (also conveniently called improvisation) involves.
Seeing live music needs to be immersive, and maybe overwhelming, and engaging. If you can achieve that, if you can see the WHY, then you'll be all the more prepared to ask the HOW.
The music has to move you before you're moved.
My two cents anyway.
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Originally Posted by Travelrock
Originally Posted by Travelrock
A wise decision. You might find Jane Miller's Introduction to Jazz Guitar (Berklee Press/Hal Leonard, 2015) to be more agreeable – not least for showing the basics of jazz guitar to the reader, without the hectoring found in many other primers.
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Originally Posted by ChazFromCali
I can play a lot o songs, including Misty, Blue Bossa and others. I have memoriced a lot of songs during years of playing. I know the melody and the harmony, I play fingerstyle chord melody.
My goal is go deeper in the study of harmony and its relation with the improvisation for including in my repertoire when I play gigs.
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Originally Posted by SOLR
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Originally Posted by Lionelsax
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Originally Posted by Gilpy
I need to organize the stuff to take advantage of the time spend in study.
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Originally Posted by Litterick
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Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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Originally Posted by Travelrock
Pick an approach.
1. Scat sing in your mind and play that. Practice with backing tracks.
2. Pick some tunes, get recordings by players who don't play a zillion notes and learn enough of them to build some vocabulary on those songs. Practice with backing tracks.
3. Learn some theory. This is a potential abyss, but start simply with tonal centers and chord tones. Apply it to blues, rhythm changes and simple tunes like All of Me or Night and Day. For example, consider that most of All of Me is built on a C major tonal center. Think all white keys. Then when the chord conflicts, like the E7, raise the G to a G#. When you get to A7, raise the C to C#. The scales are viewed as a pool of notes to select from. Pick some that make a nice little melody with good rhythm. Practice with backing tracks.
If you don't like that, try it using chord tones only, then extend them to 9th chords and maybe 13th chords.
When you're bored with that, incorporate #11, b9 and #9. Then #5. You're done. That's all the notes.
Of course, you're not done. I kid. This forum is filled with lots of other things you can try.
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Book recommendation
https://www.shermusic.com/9780997661743.php
Don’t get too romantic or purist about improvisation. Learn some good sounding things to play at first. All this ‘hearing stuff in your head’ stuff is great, but the main aim of the exercise is to sound good. The more you learn, the more freedom you will have.
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Are you a fingerstyle player?
If so then perhaps what you are looking for is Tim Lerch's Chordal Improv course on Truefire.
The course consists of playing improv over the changes. So you play your piece, Misty for example, then improv for a chorus or two.
Tim's a great player and the course is very good.
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The suggestions given so far are all great but there are also less poetic, more grinding parts of learning jazz guitar.
The way you learned the instrument for sight reading and reciting repertoire may not be readily useful for jazz improvisation. An essential part of jazz improvisation is to learn to see the instrument in a chord centric way and be able to voice lead through chord changes with your lines. Some people dabble with this for decades and still not get to a point where they can do it even over the blues changes, others get good at it in a few years. It's really about the practice attitude. Books are mostly useless for this. Playing lines that outline the changes also gradually develops ears for harmony really well.
Regarding harmony, presumably you learned about functional harmony, chord and scale construction, intervals, chord progression cycles, bass movements etc. already in school. It should be fairly easy for you to pick up functional tune analysis in the jazz style. I don't think not getting even deeper into harmony beyond this point will be an obstacle for jazz improvisation.
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Originally Posted by Travelrock
Given your background and that you already know many tunes, along with many great suggestions above, start improvising off the melody line. As you do that and you get a bit more adventurous at moving away from the melody line, you'll start playing notes that are not in the melody - maybe b9, #11, whatever - and your ear will tell you if those notes fit the chord. Don't forget to add rhythmic patterns to that. As you do that you'll develop a deeper understanding of the harmony that you are adding to the line and you'll be improvising 'your way'. And, even better, you'll be getting into improvising in a very practical way, not reading books.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by Liarspoker
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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